Water Like a Stone (25 page)

Lally lay on her back, the bedclothes held to her chin with both hands, the dark fan of her lashes casting shadows on her pale cheeks. As a child, she had slept in the same position, as if protecting herself even in her dreams, while Sam had flailed his arms and legs like a swimmer.

Dear God, thought Juliet, how long had it been since she had watched her daughter sleep? And when had her little baby become so beautiful? She reached out and traced the curve of the girl’s cheek with her finger. Lally’s eyes fluttered at the touch, and for just an instant, her lips curved in a smile of contentment. She pressed her face against her mother’s hand, like an infant seeking contact. Then her eyes flew open and Juliet saw the awareness flood in, felt her daughter stiffen and draw away from her touch. Carefully, deliberately, Lally turned her back to her mother and shifted to the edge of the bed, and Juliet thought her heart would break.

He hadn’t imagined the way the blood would smell, or the slick feel of it on his fingers. He hadn’t known that the memory of it would keep him awake, tossing and turning with a strange, jittery discontent that felt like an itch deep in his veins. He’d expected exhilaration, not this half-acknowledged fear that things were spiraling out of his grasp, splintering around him. And yet there was fascination, too, and a new power, waiting like an incubating beast.

“The pathologist and the scene-of-crime lads should be here anytime,” Larkin said as Babcock followed her down the towpath. “Is the sergeant on his way?”

“Oh, he’s on his way. Just not here.” Babcock edged round a dip filled with standing water, glad he had made the decision to change into boots. It was cold as well, as the porcelain-blue sky of early morning had begun to haze over and a sharp west wind stirred the tops of the hedgerows. When Larkin cast a surprised glance over her shoulder, he added, “I’ve sent him to oversee a deconstruction crew at the dairy barn. I think we had better make sure there are no more bodies in those walls. And I’ve put in a request for the equipment we need to scan the floor.”

“Bugger,” Larkin commented succinctly. “Your Mrs. Newcombe will have a coronary. The sarge is probably not too happy, either.”

“I suspect it wouldn’t have been Sergeant Rasansky’s first choice, but it needs to be done.” Babcock wanted to see how Larkin handled herself on a major case. She was buzzed—he could tell that by the contained excitement in her voice and her step—but still she’d been kind and thorough with the witness.

And a good thing, too, as the witness had turned out to be a Scotland Yard superintendent’s son. He’d left the boy waiting for his father’s arrival in the care of the uniformed constable, but for once he had no doubt that his witness would remain available. Babcock was debating how he felt about having Scotland Yard—and his old mate—breathing over his shoulder in a major investigation when they went round a sharp bend in the canal and he saw the lime-yellow jackets of the uniformed officers in the distance.

“There they are, boss,” Larkin informed him.

“I can see that,” he answered testily, picking up his pace a bit to keep up with her. He’d slipped up on his daily runs since the divorce, and it was telling.

The boat was half obscured by the knot of officers, but he could see that it was drifting, bow out, into the canal. There was no other sign of disturbance, or even of human habitation. In fact, the stretch of canal might have been lifted straight from a scene in
The Wind in the Willows.
The grass lining the towpath was emerald after the snowmelt, the dried rushes at the canal’s edge were golden, and the gleaming water reflected the twisted black trunks and feathery branches of the trees on either side of the path.

Just past the boat, the canal curved again, a seductive lure that compelled one to see what was hidden round the next bend. It was a magical place, not suited for violent death, and for the first time he had a visceral sense of how Kincaid’s son must have felt on finding the woman’s body.

Nor was it a place suited for investigation. Larkin had been right—he’d seen no access other than the way they had come. He remembered that the boy had said he’d seen a farmhouse in the distance—had he gone some way ahead before turning back for Barbridge?

The officers parted as they drew near, allowing Babcock and Larkin an unimpeded view of the towpath, but it was not until he had moved past them that Babcock saw the crumpled form on the green grass.

Her arm was thrown across her face, as if she were sleeping, but blood had darkened the spikes of her blond hair, and her legs were splayed at an unnatural angle. Babcock knelt and very gently shifted her arm so that he could see her face.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” The shock of recognition made him feel hollow, and for a moment the face before him blurred and receded. Blinking, he sat back on his heels and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth before looking up at Larkin accusingly. “I thought the boy said her name was Lebow.”

“The kid seemed positive in his ID, boss,” Larkin said defensively. “And no one’s been on the boat yet. Are you saying it’s not Lebow?”

He took a last look at the pale face before him. Her eyes were wide, her mouth slightly parted in an expression that might have been surprise. “When I knew her,” he said slowly, “her name was Annie Constantine.”

Although Gemma was driving, it was Kincaid who flashed his warrant card to the constable guarding access to the lane, and it was Kincaid who explained that he’d been summoned by Chief Inspector Babcock, and that he was the witness’s father.

Gemma felt another flash of the anger that had provoked her outburst in the Kincaids’ kitchen. What was she, the chauffeur? Never had she felt more sharply her lack of official status in Kit’s life, or regretted that she couldn’t say “I’m his mum,” or at least “He’s my stepson.” Nor did anyone seem to remember that she, too, was a police officer, and might have something to contribute.

Still fuming, she eased her Escort past the panda cars lining the end of the lane, but when she saw Kit, her irritation vanished and she felt ashamed of her petty feelings.

He was sitting in the grass at the bottom of the humpbacked bridge, knees drawn up, his back against the abutment, his thin face
pinched with fright and misery. A silver emergency blanket had slipped from one shoulder, revealing the shaggy brown dog clutched in his lap.

His face brightened as he saw them and he pushed himself to his feet, letting the blanket fall to the ground.

Gemma pulled the car up parallel to an SUV parked at the end of the small lay-by near the bridge.

Kincaid was out of the car before she had come to a full stop, and so reached Kit first. By the time Gemma joined them, he’d grasped his son in a one-armed hug. For a moment, Kit turned his face to his father’s shoulder, then he straightened and pulled away, biting his lip.

Gemma wanted to throw her arms around the boy, wanted to hold him tight and stroke his hair and tell him it was okay to cry. But she held back, as she always did, afraid he would feel she was overstepping her bounds, trying to take his mother’s place. She contented herself with patting his shoulder as Kincaid said, “Kit, are you all right? Tell me what happened.”

Of course he wasn’t all right, thought Gemma, but Kit answered with obvious effort. “We were walking. I saw the boat. Then I saw her—Annie. I knew—” He shook his head.

“You didn’t see anyone else?” Kincaid asked.

“No. I told the chief inspector.”

Kincaid took him gently but firmly by the shoulders and looked in his eyes. “Did you touch anything?”

Gemma’s first thought was that this was no time to be worrying about the integrity of the crime scene, but her protest died on her lips as she read the expression on Kincaid’s face. It was not the integrity of the scene that concerned him, she realized, but the fact that Kit might have left some trace that would connect him with the woman’s death.

“Of course not.” Kit sounded incensed, and that, at least, was an improvement. “I know better than that. I kept Tess away, too.”
Hearing her name, the little terrier raised her head and licked his chin, and Gemma saw that even in Kit’s arms the dog was shivering.

“We need to get you both somewhere warm,” she said, then, turning to Kincaid, added, “Can’t DCI Babcock or one of his officers take Kit’s statement at the house?”

“No.” The protest came from Kit, not Kincaid. “I want to stay. I told the chief inspector I would. And he said he wants to see you, as soon as possible.”

Kincaid glanced at Gemma, his conflict clearly evident. She knew he felt he should stay with Kit—he
wanted
to stay with Kit—and yet he also wanted to go after Babcock, to see the crime scene, to be in on the action. And he was afraid that if he asked her to stay, she’d think him guilty of relegating her to child minder again.

She took pity on him. He did need to talk to Babcock. He had known the victim, and liked the woman—he was connected to this crime in a way she was not. “You go ahead,” she said, with a small smile. “Kit and I will wait for you here.”

Babcock had just slipped on a pair of latex gloves when the shifting of the uniformed officers heralded another arrival. He glanced up, expecting the SOCOs, or Dr. Elsworthy, but it was Duncan Kincaid. Babcock met his eyes and nodded an acknowledgment.

“You agree with your son, then?” he asked. “This is the woman you met as Annie Lebow?”

After a glance at the body, Kincaid came over to him. “Yes. Have you any idea—”

“You didn’t tell me you had a son,” Babcock interrupted.

Kincaid looked startled. “You didn’t ask. I suppose it didn’t occur to me that you didn’t know. Does it matter?”

“Your son—Kit—said that the two of you met the victim, and that she’d invited you to visit her again.”

Kincaid nodded, but his expression had grown slightly wary. “That was on Christmas Day. She was moored up above Barbridge then, on the Middlewich Branch. She asked us to come back yesterday—she said she’d let Kit steer the boat—but we didn’t manage it.”

“You didn’t know her before that?”

“No. What are you getting at, Ronnie?” Kincaid asked, drawing closer so that he wouldn’t be overheard. “And what did you mean when you said the woman we
met
as Annie Lebow?”

Babcock glanced down the path. There was still no sign of the techs or the pathologist. “Sheila,” he called out, “can you rustle up an extra pair of gloves and some shoe covers?”

“Rustle up?” Kincaid repeated, one eyebrow raised. “I see you didn’t outgrow your fondness for the Wild West.”

Larkin, however, complied without hesitation. Digging in the capacious pockets of her coat, she produced both gloves and elasticized paper shoe covers. “I’m a good Boy Scout, boss,” she said with a cheeky grin. “Are you going aboard before the scene-of-crime lads get here?”

Although one of the bow doors stood slightly ajar, there was no other obvious sign of disturbance to the boat. “It doesn’t look as though there was a struggle aboard, or a forced entry, so the killer may not have been on the boat at all. And we need a positive ID. We’ll be careful.” Handing Kincaid the gloves and one set of shoe covers, Babcock fit the other set over his shoes.

After a moment’s hesitation, Kincaid followed suit. “You’re the boss, mate.”

The bow of the boat had drifted back to within a foot of the water’s edge, and Babcock wanted to take advantage of the proximity. The hard border of the canal had been overgrown by turf, and as he knelt he immediately felt the sodden grass soak through the knees of his trousers. He leaned out, very much aware that if he fell headfirst
into the canal, he would not only be likely to freeze to death, but that if he survived, he’d never live it down. He’d be known as “arse-up Babcock” until they pensioned him off.

His fingers caught the slippery gunwale, and held, but his jubilation was brief as he felt the boat’s surprising resistance. For a moment, he hung suspended, knowing that if the boat moved the other way he would go with it; then the fates smiled on him and the
Horizon
slid smoothly into the bank.

One of the uniformed officers stepped forward and grabbed the gunwale so that Babcock was able to reach the rope that hung from the center fender, drifting in the water like a pale snake. The mooring pin that had once held the rope had left dark punctures in the grass, but there was no sign of the pin itself.

The uniformed constable slipped gloves from his pocket and took the rope from Babcock. “I’ll take it, sir, until you get aboard and see if there’s a spare pin.”

Babcock climbed over the gunwale and Kincaid followed, his longer legs giving him the advantage. They both stood still, checking for any sign of disturbance, but Babcock saw no footprints, no mud or blood. The purr of the generator, which he had noticed only peripherally before, was more audible, but still barely louder than a human hum.

Easily locating a spare mooring pin in the tidy well deck, he handed it across to the constable, instructing him, “Place it as far from the original mooring as possible.” Kincaid played out several feet of line from the bow stanchion and the officer moved back towards the stern, anchoring the pin well outside the trampled area around the original site.

“That should hold her, sir,” the constable called, “even if it does rub up the paintwork a bit.”

From this vantage point, Babcock could see faint light shining through the gap left by the open half of the cabin’s double doors. He
slipped on his gloves and, with a glance at Kincaid, pulled the door wide and stepped down into the salon.

“Holy shit.” He stopped so suddenly that Kincaid bumped him from behind.

“My sentiments exactly, when I came aboard before,” Kincaid said as Babcock moved aside to make room for him. Although the words were light, Babcock could hear the strain in his voice. He felt it, too, the overwhelming sense of a life interrupted.

Although the fire in the woodstove had gone cold, the radiators still pumped out heat; the lights still shone. A book lay open on an end table beside a half-empty mug of tea. A heavy insulated jacket hung on a hook set into the paneling near the bow doors.

“I’d never have expected a social worker—especially a retired social worker—to have this kind of money,” Babcock said, still appraising the luxurious fittings. Put together with the pristine condition of the boat’s exterior and expensively quiet generator, it shouted “no expense spared.”

“Social worker?” Kincaid was obviously surprised. “She was a social worker? And you knew her?”

“I worked some cases with her. But then I heard she’d retired—oh, five, six years ago. Dropped off the map. Can’t say I blamed her, after the last case we dealt with together.”

“Rough?” Kincaid asked.

“She’d placed a child in foster care. The parents were drug users, couldn’t stay clean. You know the story. Then the foster father killed the kid. I think she blamed herself, but it was the system.” Babcock shrugged. “Sometimes you just can’t get it right.”

Kincaid repeated his earlier question. “What did you mean about her name. Was it not Lebow?”

“You’re a persistent bastard.” Babcock attempted a smile. “When I knew her, her name was Constantine. I think her husband was a journalist, but I’m not sure. She never really talked about her private
life.” What he didn’t say was that he had been attracted to her. Not that she had given him any encouragement, or that he would have done anything about it if she had. Ironic, that he hadn’t known then that all those years of fidelity were a waste.